


You'll Be Sorry

by Not_You



Category: Hannibal (TV), Nightmares And Dreamscapes - Stephen King, Popsy - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Dark Will Graham, Gen, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, M/M, Protectiveness, Rescue, Revenge, Vampires, Werewolves, mason verger is the scum of the earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 04:19:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12313632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: 'Tis the season, and I've recently been listening to Nightmares And Dreamscapes, which contains the story Popsy, of which this is a Hannibal version.  Because no one demanded it.  Happy Halloween! :D





	You'll Be Sorry

Mason Verger believes in quality merchandise. There is always the temptation to keep the particularly nice ones for himself, and he can often afford to, but right now he owes the Sinacore family way too much money to get selfish. And this one will bring a fine price. She has a sort of pink and white all-American charm, with big blue eyes, sleek dark hair and the kind of barely-plump little body that Mason really loves in a five-year-old. He's good with ages, she can't be six yet, standing by the mall entrance with her little face all pinched with suppressed panic. Mason schools his face into its friendliest smile and walks right up to her, crouching to be at her level.

"Are you lost, sweetheart?" he asks, and she gives him a don't-talk-to-strangers look, and then turns her pretty little head from side to side, looking more desperate than ever.

"I... I need to find my papa" she says, obviously trying not to cry. Mason wishes she would, and that they were somewhere that he could lick the tears off those rosy cheeks, but there's time for that later, since it doesn't count as damaging the merchandise. For now he gives the child another smile.

"Well, why don't you tell me what he looks like? Maybe I've seen him."

"He's tall and kinda skinny and his face is all sharp and he's wearing a suit that's all blue and silver windowpane check and his hair flops like this." She makes an eloquent gesture, and Mason marvels at how gay and/or European Papa sounds. It's good that he's so distinctive, though, because that will make it more believable when he says that he saw a guy just like that at the McDonald's across the parking lot. The girl blinks when he says so, and doubt flickers across her face. "He said he was going to get us some food, but we never eat McDonald's." She draws back a little, and Mason can't have her getting wary. He has to put her off-balance, so he shrugs and stands up again.

"Well, if you're so sure," he says, and turns to leave. This almost always works. Once you've got them thinking you might be a friend, threat of withdrawal knocks the suspicion right out of them.

"Wait!" the girl yelps, and Mason smiles, turning back to her.

"I wouldn't have really left you, sweetheart," he croons, and takes her hand, explaining to her that he'll just drive her over to the McDonald's. 

The car has tinted windows and a metal strut welded onto each rear door, so he can cuff his little friends when they become unruly. The girl climbs in and Mason shuts the doors and climbs into the driver's seat, acting as friendly and as normal as he can manage. This one really is special, and he wants her, badly. He has a syringe of something strong, maybe he can find an excuse to use it. A little tactile appreciation isn't damaging the merchandise. He tips the rearview mirror back so that he can watch the girl, who is watching the McDonald's, scanning for Papa. He swings around to the back of the building, where it's isolated and starting to get really dark. There's no one parked back here, which is just another lovely little gift from Jesus. He eases the open handcuffs out of the pocket in the door for maps and whatever else.

"Why are we back here?" the girl asks, her little voice going tight and fearful.

"It's all right," Mason says, as soothingly as he can manage. He needs to do this quick and smooth, it doesn't pay to underestimate a desperate little kid. "I know he's in there, and I'm a little hungry myself. I dropped my wallet, and I think it's back there next to you, can you check for me?"

The girl finds the empty wallet Mason keeps back there for this kind of thing, and when she hands it forward he gets one cuff around her little broom straw of a wrist, and then all hell breaks loose. She yanks away from him with strength a little girl shouldn't possess, even in this kind of extremity. At the least the dome light is off, so there's nothing to give them away when she actually gets the door open, but Mason can't appreciate that until he snatches her back in by the hair, and then he can't appreciate anything because the bitch swivels her head like a snake and then bites like one. Her teeth are long and sharp and she staples him, sunk in to the gum line.

Trying to get away from her he takes another bite, and then hits her open hand, to minimize damage to the merchandise, but hard enough to daze her for the second he needs to click the other side of the cuffs around the metal strut on the door. The girl yanks at it frantically, and Mason ignores her for the moment. His hand hurts like she stabbed him, and it's bleeding about that much, too. He's going to need stitches, possibly some work on the bone. For now, he just contains the mess and gets into his personal drug stash, dry-swallowing two of the good pills. He would usually only take one when he needs to drive, but not tonight. Christ, his whole arm hurts. As soon as he can, he gets the hell out of this parking lot. In motion and with tinted windows, nobody's going to notice shit, and nothing could be better.

"Where are we going?" the girl sobs, and of course now she cries, when Mason is in no position to enjoy it.

"That's for me to know and you to find out," he croons, and the girl can't help a little whimper of misery that almost makes this whole fucking thing worth it.

"You'll be sorry," she says through her tears, and when Mason takes a glance back at her, despite the (pink-tinted, the fuck?) tears and the trembling lip, those blue-grey eyes look more like ice than any he has ever seen, and he associates with a great many people for whom empathy is purely theoretical. "Papa will find me," the girl says, sniffling but determined. "If he doesn't, Daddy will. They can smell me."

So Papa is probably European and definitely gay. So much the better. Mason likes to take the dearly beloved, and the end result of some tortuous faggot adoption process is a rare jewel, indeed. Glancing back at those pinkish tears, and smelling the child himself, a strange, almost scaly smell, Mason wonders if the kid has some kind of massive inborn error of metabolism. Shit, if she falls apart from not having her meds or whatever, he's going to have to start over. Still, she is remarkably pretty, and seems all right for now. Even at a reduced rate she should net something decent.

And then Mason hears a little squealing noise from the strut and nearly drives off the road in shock. No kid has ever managed to even shift it. He paid good money for that job, it's rated to hold an adult, and in the midst of trying to straighten the car out again and not go into the opposite ditch, Mason vows to lay waste to that machine shop and the guy who recommended it. There's another little metallic sound, and Mason yells at the kid to stop it, pulling into the first turnout he sees and grabbing the syringe out of the console. The kid may be strong, but she's definitely scared of needles. She stops, and watches him with wide eyes.

"This should just knock you out," he says, "but it's hard to get the dose right for little kids, so it might kill you." It almost certainly would not, and he's a little disappointed that she believes him enough to go still, so he doesn't have an excuse to use it. Mason is able to drive on in the sweet music of the girl's quiet weeping, but after a few miles she has to start mouthing off again.

"Papa can fly," she says, and Mason rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, I bet he flies _real_ high when he takes his medicine."

"He does it w-with _wings_ , dummy," she snaps through her tears, "and Daddy has a whole pack of wolves and you'll be sorry!"

Mason is about to tell her that an active imagination isn't going to get her out of this when damned if he doesn't hear the howling of a wolf from the field beside the road. It can't really be a wolf. This is just a country road, not the Canadian wilderness. 

"Daddy!" the girl shrieks, and that weird, scaly smell fills the car. 

There's more howling, and then a heavy impact on the on the roof of the car that sends Mason wobbling across the blacktop. He yanks the wheel from side to side, trying to dislodge whatever or whoever it is. "Papa, I'm sorry I went with the bad man!" the girl screams, and something punches through the roof, peeling it back like the top of a sardine can. Mason slams on the brakes as he skids into the breakdown lane, and there's a shriek of metal, the creature on the roof of the car hanging on in the face of inertia. One massive wing slaps across the windshield, a bat writ large and Mason may not believe in this kind of thing but he has the sense to unbuckle his seat belt and leap out of the car. He's running into another field before he remembers the howling. Green eyes glow in the dark all around him, and one set is too high up to be any four-legged animal.

"You should have left her alone," the owner of the eyes growls, and he may be standing on two legs but he doesn't sound quite human.

Mason pulls out his knife, eyes flicking from side to side as he tries to keep an account of what he's pretty sure really are wolves, and starts to back up, step by step. The wolves growl and snap, never in place for him to land a good cut. He starts to realize that they're herding him, and he's covered in sweat, knees going rubbery as he tries to calculate some way of getting out of this.

Papa is sitting on what's left of the van's ruined roof, the little girl in his lap. He's dressed just as described, and his vast, dark wings are wrapped around the girl. He smiles to see the wolves driving Mason, whirling around him and always snapping their long, white teeth. The girl's teeth look just like them as she smiles too, pink tears wiped away.

"Still hungry, darling?" Papa asks her, and she nods. "Beloved?" he says to the inhuman thing lurking just out of the light.

"Yes," it growls, and a black-furred paw wraps around Mason's knife hand almost too fast to see. It closes with crushing force, and in a few seconds Mason is screaming, tiny bones in his hand popping one by one. Two terrible motions and both of Mason's shoulders as dislocated. The creature drags Mason, sobbing and gibbering, onto the hood of the van.

"I should have gone with them," the wolf-thing snarls, shoving Mason up the windshield toward its mate, breaking his knees almost negligently. "I thought I could just stay home tonight, but no, you just had to put your greasy claws on my daughter."

"Beloved, don't blame yourself for this creature's conduct," Papa purrs, and reaches out with one elegant, capable hand, each finger tipped with a knife-like claw. 

His thumb disappears under Mason's chin, and the last thing he sees as the claw plunges in and lets out his whole red pulse, is the girl cupping her dainty little hands to catch the red stream, drinking it in big gulps as Papa strokes her hair, his blood-red eyes full of inexpressible tenderness. The last thing he hears is the howling of wolves.


End file.
